PETITION: Leave the game as it is.

[Knoll]

there havent been a game released on the market that havent been patched not even Blizzard is flawless and changes is good u moron.

and if your gameplay havent changed or yada yada why the fock do u whine if u dont like the changes/progress go play chess board game dont think that will change that much in the near future

 

[old.Tohtori]

Knoll, i'll try to put this as politely as i can.

I wasn't talking about DAoC, that's why i mentioned that my gameplay hasn't changed. I was giving due critisism towards the unfinished product. So your comment "every game has been patched" enforces my point.

Never said any game has been perfect, not even blizzard games. But change is not always good.

Keffo:

"How can old things stay the same if they are new?"

If you add new weapons to a game, that's always a plus.

If you add content to a game, that's lso good.

But if you change the way something has worked for ages, possibly rendering your gameplay pointless, why do it?

Regarding DAoC, they don't need to nerf a class, just change other classes better and i can assure you that the community would feel a heckuva lot better.

Never said any game has been perfect, not even blizzard games. But change is not always good.

Teh Fnord:

"even if the old things are bad/broken/plain silly?"

Then they should be taken out in the testing phase. The game developers should be smarter then the gamers in this aspect.

 

[Knoll]

so instead of bringing 1 class down"nerfing" they should up all the other classes even u has to understand that it aint gonna happen..

what are u a grumpy old minzer feeling like u got nerfed cause of MoS ??

adapt and overcome.

 

[Conchabar]

i have to agree i dont like ras either and i have played since yank beta t.t

 

[old.Tohtori]

so instead of bringing 1 class down"nerfing" they should up all the other classes even u has to understand that it aint gonna happen..

what are u a grumpy old minzer feeling like u got nerfed cause of MoS ??

adapt and overcome.

It can happen, and quite easily i might add.

I'm old., grumpy maybe, but haven't played since Shrouded came out. Didn't read my last post again?

"I wasn't talking about DAoC, that's why i mentioned that my gameplay hasn't changed. I was giving due critisism towards the unfinished product. So your comment "every game has been patched" enforces my point."

 

[Morchaoron]

Ok I don't mind improvements like redoing the frontiers or characther models for example...

HOWEVER I HATE it when they release completely unfinished crap that hasnt even been tested properly only because they "want to add something new to the game" (anyone remember the RA's?? how many did actually work?)

 

[Knoll]

i guess u are flawless and everything u would make never would need some changes ???

its a constant change and developing going into this mmorpgs and yes u can test untill your hair fall off, and their will allways be ppl not liking this and that and u have to upset a few to please the masses.

this is especially so in daoc with different realms and keeping each realm uniqe its not like UO where every 1 either played tank mage or lumberjack axer.


and yes i dont allways like the changes myself but still imo changes are good.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Knoll you're failing to see that the zeal against changes you blame me off is the same amount that you are zealing towards the "change is good" side.

I know that things arn't perfect, me least of them, hell i have an insane fluffy white clubbers paradise as an alias. Actually i'm more like his alias, anyway...

All i'm saying is that things should be tested more and only now the game industry is starting to realise how much testing things works towards their benefit. Hell, in our company i had to show them by banging my head against a wall for a good four years.

I'm not comparing this to any mmorpg, any particular genre or anything like that. Just the whole system.

And yes, i do like some changes but sometimes they cause more harm then good.

 

[Knoll]

but how far should u take the testing cause i can bet 1000$ that even if u tested a game for 10 years once it was released there would be something some 1 found buggy/unfair that would need changes that in turn would cause some 1 else to whine cause it changed their "what ever".

not to mention if u test something for 5 years by the time its released its old and obsolete so that means while u tested it u would have to upgrade and that means more testing and ye well u see my point...


that dont mean i think nothing should ever be tested no, world aint perfect and to think a game could be is naive.

 

[yaruar]

If i can test a game that is meant for 24 people alone, test all the levels without completing them or advancing to levels, going through the dynamics, etc etc...all by myself, i think a game of this magnitude and length(forever against the normal 10hours gametime) should be tested and should be able to be tested with less then 2000 players. It's all in how good the test is.

the thing is you can't test for balance when a game is designed to be played at leas tin part player versus player and group versus group. that's a major testing effort.

Also patching adds content. Without new content the player base of any game will drift away

 

[yaruar]

I say bring back chained insta stunning, that's how we used to pay, why not let us play like that again.

 

[Thorwyn]

Then they should be taken out in the testing phase. The game developers should be smarter then the gamers in this aspect

Sorry... but this statement just proves that you don´t have a clue what you´re talking about and that you´ve never been involved in the process of game developement.

I´m working in a game developer studio. Before we´re releasing our games, they´re always being tested by almost 500 testers in serveral steps.. open beta, closed beta etc.etc.

You simply can not avoid patches. No way. Flaws and balance problems can´t be spotted by normal testing. Those problems appear after a long period of playing the game with lots.. and I mean LOTS of players. That´s a simple result of the sheer ammount of possible combinations of features. Do you think the possiblity of a Cabbie killing the entire tangler beach is something you can find out via testing? No.. you can´t. YOU can now say "of course! Bad job by the developers.. it´s so obvious!". How long did it take an entire gaming community to find out that possibility? Thousands of players all over the world... and it took them months to even come close to the idea of tangler killing. Remember the Cabbalist jokes in the first few months of DAOC? Nobody wanted to play one.
Would YOU have found out? I doubt it.
Take a look at Magic: The Gathering. Same thing.. a huge testing staff with experts and everything... still, overpowered cards and combinations are still being found out by the community, not the testers and as a result, cards are being banned and rulings are being changed.

Games like DAOC are all about balance in all ways. Balance between the classes, balance between the realms, balance between the abilities. And you will never find a perfect balance, people WILL find out weaker and stronger classes/ablilties/items sooner or later. That´s the point where a normal game dies. A MMORPG on the other hand needs to say interesting and that´s why they constantly need to fix/balance problems.

Changes in the gameplay are vital to keep a game interesting and worth playing. A number of people are bitchign about ToA and how it´s killing the game. Before ToA, the game was being killed by Necros, Spellcrafting, RA`s, overpowered Mids with itemized dungeons (while barrows was still sell loot only). The same happens in other games too. I remember the huge "OMFG! THIS IS THE END! FFS" of the entire Quake community when id decided to remove floor damage. Did it kill Quake? Nope... not at all.

 

[Job]

I've just found out any realm can have DF, it doesn't belong to the Mids.

 

[Bunnytwo]

there havent been a game released on the market that havent been patched not even Blizzard is flawless and changes is good u moron.

and if your gameplay havent changed or yada yada why the fock do u whine if u dont like the changes/progress go play chess board game dont think that will change that much in the near future

Don't seem to remember anyone saying that they were against all change. Yep game did need changes when it first came out.

However, change for changes sake is no better.

Fair enough perhaps those people that didn't like RvR wanted new areas and such to explore. Good give it to them. However, the problem with ToA for me is that I don't like xping etc and I really don't like having to be forced to go through it all again in order to be able to RvR effectively again uke:

 

[Danya]

so instead of bringing 1 class down"nerfing" they should up all the other classes even u has to understand that it aint gonna happen..

what are u a grumpy old minzer feeling like u got nerfed cause of MoS ??

adapt and overcome.

Boosting everyone but one is the same net effect as nerfing one class anyway - either way, you get nerfed.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I'm gonna try one more time. Then i'll go back to being insane as it seems to work better then trying to say something "smart".

When a game is released, only major issues and things that really are harmful to a game should be changed.

Upping others, be it slowly, rather then dropping other classes from a 500 feet tower should always be option one.

Never should abilities or things in game be removed when they are implemented in the first place.

Developers should know better then the player because that way you make hit-games. Sadly this is not true all the time.

I work as an internal quality assurance lead in a gamehouse, not on a massive game project so don't know all about that. But i do know a helluva lot about testing, being a graphic artist and a level designer aswell, i do know alot about other areas aswell.

Sorry if my views are not the same as some others, but they are mine.

 

[bult]

This game was soooo crap back in 1,36(?) when i started, thank god for patches or i would NOT be playing this game still.

For those of you who wasnt there back in beta / early release it had alot of really big issues like NO CC immunity so could spam AE stun on a group until everyone was dead and things like that.

The game was more fun back then probably but ONLY because it was new, new patches usually make the game better but having played daoc for so long its hard to understand that since lets face it, it will never be as fun as when you were a newbie.

The patch we had before ToA was IMO the best patch daoc had ever seen, most balanced and full of nice features that didnt exist at release. ToA really fucked up the balance but it added alot of cool things that could become really nice if they manage to balance it out again, lets hope.

 

[Thorwyn]

When a game is released, only major issues and things that really are harmful to a game should be changed.

That´s true for traditional games, SP games etc. You release them, get some feedback and change major issues to fix problems.. done.
MMORPG´s are different. They have to constantly change in order to stay competitive.

Developers should know better then the player because that way you make hit-games.

If you´re working in the gamedevelopment sector, you should know, that this sentence is absolute and utter BS. Do you think Carmack has a clue about bridge to rail jump on DM6 or how to control a map in a duel match? Do you think the guy who invented chess can beat Garri? Of course not!
Developers are giving a platform to play on and it´s always.. ALWAYS the players who´re exploring the game and find out each and every way to play it successfully. We´re not talking about basic game mechanisms, we´re talking about the extreme tweaks and ways to exploit the environment (or rather: use the environment with maximum effectivity). It´s impossible to create a 100% balanced Multiplayergame as soon as you´re trying to make something slightly more complex than Tic Tac Toe or create a game that´s 100% skillbased.

Don´t you get it? Balance IS a major issue because the result of non-balanced games is, that nobody is going to play the weak classes and everybody is playing the strong classes. Take a look at the ALbion population and the class distribution and you´ll see where the problems are. Therefor, the process of balancing in a game like DAOC is infinite. An unbalanced game IS harmful to the game.

Now the process of how to balance something... what do you think how balancing works? Consider a class with an overpowered ability. Lets stick to my Cabalist example. Some clever dude found a way to constantly wipe the entire tangler beach, farming tons of money and powerlevelling toons like a maniac. The unbalance is there... now how should we deal with it? Give all other classes an ability to kill an equivalent ammount of mobs? No, of course not! You´re tweaking the ability of that class to even out the unbalance. Instead of increasing everybody else, you´re decreasing the abilities of the crucial class. If they didn´t do that, they would constantly have to boost everybody elses abilities and the game would more and more drift away from the game they tried to create in the first place, ending in Marvel Super Heroes of Camelot.

If you can´t cope with a flexible gameplay and the fact that sometimes features HAVE to be removed to balance the game, then MMORPG`s simply aren´t your games.

 

[Breon]

Cant think of many games theese days that dont have patches tbh.

 

[living]

I say bring back chained insta stunning, that's how we used to pay, why not let us play like that again.

ah yea i remember that, god damn it could piss me off being stunned the whole fight Almost quitted the game until i heard they would fix it..

 

[Ethild]

Never should abilities or things in game be removed when they are implemented in the first place.

I completely disagree. It something is extremely overpowered and unfair, it has to be dealt with, I don't care how long it has been in the game.

Your way of 'boosting everyone else instead' is obscene. If one class is overpowered you would then have to edit 30+ classes to make it even? Rather than just lowering the ability of a single class? Not to mention the fact for this to have worked, you would have needed to add just the right abilities/bonuses to the 30+ other classes, or you one of them would be over/underpowered and the process could repeat? Are you really suggesting we should end up with a game where everyone has an 'I win' button, and the first person to press it is the winner?

Common sense prevails here, if something is unfair, it needs to be brought back in line. The most sensible, time efficient, and least open to massive repercussions is to reduce the ability, rather than increasing everyone else's.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Grand theft auto.

Halo.

Super mario brothers.

Gran Turismo


...and so.. f*cking ...on...get it?

 

[Thorwyn]

Grand theft auto.

Halo.

Super mario brothers.

Gran Turismo

And your point is? Tetris never needed a patch too because the ---- stones were too overpowered.

2 of those games you mentioned are racing games, one´s a jump´n´run. Halo has never seen competitive online play. None of those games requires an elaborate balancing or finetuning other than "car x is slightly faster than car y". You´re still talking about SP or traditional MP games, not MMORPGs and you still fail to see the difference between 3000 people playing the same game simultaneously with and against each other and you playing against your PS2 or against your friend on a LAN. You can´t seriously compare the complexity of those games to DAOC.

And for the "how to fix" situation:
When you´re driving too fast in your car, what is the police supposed to do? Slow you down or tell everbody else to increase the speed?

 

[old.Tohtori]

And your point is?


You can´t seriously compare the complexity of those games to DAOC.

Seel:I wasn't talking about DAoC, that's why i mentioned that my gameplay hasn't changed. I was giving due critisism towards the unfinished product. So your comment "every game has been patched" enforces my point.

That's the point.


EDIT:

Also, why is it os hard to understand that i don't WANT MMORPG's to be the same, but i'd LIKE and HOPE that they develop into a patchfree game.

 

[Svartmetall]

Do you think Carmack has a clue about bridge to rail jump on DM6...

Carmack? No, 'cos he wrote the engine.
But I'll bet Tim Willits, who did most of the work on Q3DM6 (one of my favourite maps btw, love it) had a pretty good idea people would be doing that one.

And...IMO a very good parallel with Q3, that illustrates some gamers' mentalities perfectly, was when v1.25 came out for Q3 and lots of people were going 'argh this sucks, why couldn't they have left it at v1.17 it was perfect then'.
Kind of like how some DAOC players always go 'argh this game was better before 1.68/TOA/SI/RAs/smite nerf/the invention of the wheel' etc etc.

...

 

[Balbor]

what needs to be done is to give all the realms the same abilities, then slowely add the unique stuff making sure it doesn't upset the balence. The only difference in the realms should be the look and feel, after all thats what effects new player when they choose a realm .People roll a troll cause they wanna look like a huge, stone monster with a two handed Axe, People Roll Paladins cause they are playing camelot and they wanna be a Knight in shining Armour (an Paladins are one of the most sterotypical RPG characters). Albion is probably the most highly populated realm in the world because 1) game is called camelot and people wanna play character clases they accosiate with the ledgend 2) Albionhave the most sterotypical RPG characters. However Mid and Hibs have the most succesful guild (RvR guilds if you will) is because they are seen as the easyist realms to play.

 

[Thorwyn]

Carmack? No, 'cos he wrote the engine.
But I'll bet Tim Willits, who did most of the work on Q3DM6 (one of my favourite maps btw, love it) had a pretty good idea people would be doing that one.

um.. no!
If anybody has a clue about what´s possible with the physics in Quake, then it´s Carmack.
bridge-to-rail was first seen about a year after Q3 release when the hardware slowly allowed people to play with the fix fps neccessary to do that one. The idea of strafejumping etc. was definitely not a gamefeature.
Even rocketjump was originally a bug... as was floordamage. And if Willits has such a good understanding of the game, then why are all except 3 or 4 Q3 maps utter crap and unplayable for competitive play? There´s not a single map from the original map pool left in todays Q3. All tournament level maps are tweaked, be it T4 or DM6. Even DM6 is bollocks. Remember the original DM6? MH spawnpoint 1 meter away from RA.. .yeah, sure!
DM6 was becoming a map with TMP and with the pro- maps.

And...IMO a very good parallel with Q3, that illustrates some gamers' mentalities perfectly, was when v1.25 came out for Q3 and lots of people were going 'argh this sucks, why couldn't they have left it at v1.17 it was perfect then'.
Kind of like how some DAOC players always go 'argh this game was better before 1.68/TOA/SI/RAs/smite nerf/the invention of the wheel' etc etc.

Exactly! That´s what I´ve said before.. this mechanism of "omg omg! the game is going to die when they do that", that´s the same in every game these days.

Also, why is it os hard to understand that i don't WANT MMORPG's to be the same, but i'd LIKE and HOPE that they develop into a patchfree game.

You´re constantly bringing examples of games you can´t compare with DAOC. If you see the differences, then why bring those examples?

Mate, sorry, but you need to figure out what you really want to say. You´re startig a petition to not change DAOC (that´s the original idea of the thread). Then you´re switching to "if things are unbalanced, don´t nerf/remove them, but boost the others. Now you´re talking about the dream of a patchfree game.

Of course, patchfree games is what everybody wants. I want it, you want it. Releasing patches means a lot of work that´s not rewarded because the game is already out and the money is rolling in and we could spend our time much better by working on the next project or something.
Thing is, that a patchfree/bugfree game is a myth. You won´t find one. It has been possible in times of C64 and Spectrum (even the majority of the games those days games were buggy at some point). Todays games are far too complex to be patchfree and the cycles of developing a game are getting smaller and smaller. It´s not a problem of the gaming industry and the lazy developers. Software simply is too complex these days. And you´re making things FAR too easy when you say that it´s sloppy work of the developers.

I´m sorry, but I think you´re hunting a phantom there. :/

 

[old.Tohtori]

Mate, sorry, but you need to figure out what you really want to say. You´re startig a petition to not change DAOC (that´s the original idea of the thread). Then you´re switching to "if things are unbalanced, don´t nerf/remove them, but boost the others. Now you´re talking about the dream of a patchfree game.

The petition part, a joke towards the petitions. Not about DAoC this thread. Never was.

Never said "if things are unbalanced" i said "don't remove things that have been for ages".

Not just a dream, and originally was said "i hate patches". It's a reality that it could be done, maybe not with the current budjets but one day.

Stop twisting the words.

Oh and...

You´re constantly bringing examples of games you can´t compare with DAOC. If you see the differences, then why bring those examples?

Pot. Kettle.

 

[Ormorof]

Originally Posted by yaruar
I say bring back chained insta stunning, that's how we used to pay, why not let us play like that again.

remember watching 2 runies holding a pally rooted for like 2 hours in sauvage back then, eventually i think he just alt-tabbed to crash himself

 

[Danya]

Grand theft auto.

Halo.

Super mario brothers.

Gran Turismo


...and so.. f*cking ...on...get it?

Irrelevant point. You're not allowed (or even able till recently) to patch consoles games, they have to be correct to start with.
However they're much easier to test than PC games as they don't run on lots of different hardware. Making bug-free games for PC, especially MMORPGs is not feasible. Would you really want to pay $150 then $50/month for that? Because that's the sort of money it would take - you have to have an enourmous amount of test resource.